Team Approach

Client Need

A Fortune 500 company is emerging from bankruptcy. Post-bankruptcy,
the automatic stay on several large pieces of litigation will be lifted. The company wants to begin preparing for discovery in the lawsuits, which involves complex financial matters and securities issues.

Solution

Counsel On Call assembles a team of 15 attorneys, including two team leaders and one paralegal, for the project. The majority of attorneys have litigation backgrounds with emphases in the subject matters of the various lawsuits. Most of the attorneys also have strong financial backgrounds, including one MBA, and several earned their undergraduate degrees in accounting and finance. The team leaders, with large-firm complex litigation and management experience, bill at a rate of $78 per hour.

The team leaders provide supervision and answer their team members’ questions related to the litigation, privilege and evidentiary concerns. The paralegal coordinates and manages the collection, routing, copying and scanning of the discovery documents. He or she also coordinates the rotation of materials to those law firms representing other parties in the litigation. The team members all have excellent academics and bill at a rate of $60 per hour. The paralegals bill at a rate of $40 per hour.

Result

The attorneys compiled and reviewed more than 14,000 boxes of paper and electronic materials for relevance, privilege, responsiveness and a host of case-specific issues. The initial tasks were completed in less than six months. Following the client’s initial project, 10 members of the original Counsel On Call team were selected for subsequent lawsuit projects, in which they continue to serve as the core team for all discovery-related matters in the company’s litigation.

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